Baby exchange (7/11/11)

A lot of women have been having babies in the past month or so, but this was certainly a special case. One of my mom's in the village was due pretty much any day and her husband was the not so proud father of 4 girls already. I say not so proud in the sense that he just really wanted to have a boy. I was sitting down one night at the nakamal drinking kava with him when I jokingly said that if his wife had another girl he'd just have to trade it for one of the baby boys in the village and no one would be the wiser. He laughed about it and I thought it was a great joke. Boy, was I ever wrong. About a week later he and his wife went up to the dispensary so that she could have the baby. Unbeknownst to me, at the same time another one of my distant family members was there having a child as well. Wouldn't you know, my dad Bob's wife had another girl, making him the father of 5 girls now, while my other cousin cousin cousin something's wife had a baby boy, the 6^th of 6 boys born to him. While both of the women were sleeping and holding their new born babies the dads sat down and decided that they would make a trade. Bob didnt want another girl he wanted a boy, and his cousin felt the same about wanting a girl, because he would need a girl to cook and clean once his wife got too old to do it. So it was decided and the men shook on it. The next morning they explained to their wives that they were trading babies. This obviously didnt go over too well with the women, who were quite attached to the child they had just born regardless of gender. Bob's wife Stelin was very upset (understandably) about having to give up her new born baby girl in trade for a new born baby boy that was not hers. News of this came through coconut wireless and the women were all sitting down talking about it while cooking one day when they told this story to my real mom. This of course distressed her and she came to talk with me about it. Not sure of what I could do I called a few other volunteers and asked them if they had heard about this happening in other place. Jenni came through with an answer for me. While not a common occurrence, in Vanuatu it is perfectly legal to trade children pending entirely on the consent of..... you guessed it..... the fathers. That means if I had a kid and I wanted to give it to my cousin who really has wanted a baby boy, it doesnt matter what my wife, who just had the kid wants, I can legally pass the kid off without her consent. This made me a bit sad to find that out, but if its legal I guess there isn't much I can do unless they decide to change to rule. Vanuatu seems to become progressively crazier and crazier the more you get to know it.

Parents Visit (7/11/11)

 This is a kind of long story, but I guess that is to be expected from me as most of my stories are long ones. So at the start of June I got headed to Ambae to start my trip back into town to see my parents. The trip was off to a brilliant start with me getting drenched in salt water on the crossing as is usual. Once I got to Ambae because all of the volunteers on east Ambae were out for various reasons it meant that I was going to stay with one of my dad's who works for the provincial government. I show up and as luck would have it he was gone aswell. So still unphased by all of this news I sat down with a couple of the people I knew in the village and hung out talking for a while, fully expecting that I would be offered a bed once they found that I was without a place to sleep. Sure enough about twenty minutes into the conversation I got my offer of a place to sleep but not what I was expecting at all. They talked with one of the owners of a guest house and told him that I needed a place to sleep so I had to spend 1500 vatu for a night. Not expensive really, just funny because i've become so used to always just being offered a place to sleep on Maewo. The provincial center of ambae really is a totally different place. So that adventure done and out of the way I got up the next morning and headed down to the airport and climbed on the plane. While in flight to Vila, my phone started ringing (with the small planes you don't have to turn off your cell phone while flying here) and guess who was calling my parents! I was expected it to be my mom's last minute worried to make sure everything was going to be going according to plan and was quite shocked to find out that they had missed their flight. Upon landing in Vila I wasn't sure what to do, they had told me that they would be able to come in 2 weeks, but I had only had plans to be in Vila for one day before my parents came and now it was going to be 2 weeks. So I headed into the Peace Corps office and started discussing what to do with Sara, and thank god we have her working for us in the office. She helped me plan out work related stuff I could do for the next two weeks and even invited me to a workshop about phonemic awareness that a woman from DC was putting on for some other teacher trainers.

My next problem now was finding places to sleep for 2 weeks because I certainly don't have the money to put myself up at even a cheap hotel in vila for 2 weeks. As luck would have it the other volunteer who's place I was staying at, Alexia, was totally unphased by my request to stay for an extra week after the only night I had planned to stay at her house. At the end of that week I was looking for some other volunteers to stay with but everyone was pretty full due to the health volunteers all being in town for an aids workshop. So I had plans to stay with an Aus-aid volunteer I had met in Vila before. At about 5pm in the afternoon I was unable to get ahold of her about it and unsure where I might stay I decided to call Gene. Gene is the ex-peace corps volunteer who just started a kayaking business in port vila. I'd talked with him a couple times and he Volunteered in the village just south of me on Maewo so I figured that pretty much made us family. Luckily for me Gene felt the same way and with only about an hours warning I had a spot to sleep on his couch. I told him it'd just be for a single night and he said that I was welcome to stay as long as I needed. The next day I stayed with another volunteer and was there through to my parents coming. All things considered it wasn't as hectic of a time finding places to sleep as I had expected and all of the people I stayed with were super accommodating.

So the two weeks I spent in Vila were nice, filled with regular french fries, and trips to the store for candy, while I soaked up as much internet access as I could in my free time. I was able to skype pretty much every other night with Stephanie which made me not worry about my parents coming two weeks late! One night while Steph and I were talking she said that it was a very telling thing of our relationship that we are so long distance we look forward to skype opportunities just to be able to see each other's face haha. Finally on the 21^st of June my parents showed up from their flight. We went and stayed at the little place they had found online called Vila Chaumieres and while the rooms were nice they weren't anything too exciting. We all had dinner at the restaurant, it was a tad expensive but definitely the best steak dinner I have had since coming to Vanuatu! The next morning we got up and headed to the airport. Due to my parents coming two weeks late the only days we could get flights up to Ambae to get to Maewo were the day after they landed and the day before they flew back to the states. This had me nervous because it meant that originally they were only planning to come for 4 days to Maewo and now they would be coming up for almost the whole 2 weeks of their visit. We flew up and then crossed over and got drenched by both the ocean and the rain that was coming down in Maewo. The weather persisted in being cloudy and rainy and wouldn't let up to give them any sun, but we decided that we'd try heading down to Asanvari anyways. My grandpa Basil picked us up in the boat and we headed down to Asanvari with the day still chilly and overcast. Once down there we walked around a little as it started to rain and found out about a couple places they call the “eyes of the salt water.” These are two places where standing well up in the jungle you can see the ocean through small holes in the ground. I was excited to try and see this but a little worried about hiking up to them with the weather. As we waited for my host dad to talk to his brother about showing us the place the weather got even better. The rain started coming down as a torrent and the wind started picking up. After about half an hour it felt like the start of a hurricane. About 5 minutes later my grandpa comes running into the house we had all taken refuge in and tells us we needed to hop in the boat and head back because if this weather kept up we'd be stuck in Asanvari with a hurricane. So we all hopped back in the boat and began heading back up to my village in the coldest weather I have ever experienced in Vanuatu. The rain was pouring down and the wind was howling. My grandpa had on two sweatshirts and a beanie and in order to keep his beanie as dry as possible he stuck the gasoline funnel on his head to block the rain. I wish I had the picture to show but my parents have it, so if you see them, you should ask them about it. As we were heading up the coast all of the rivers that empty into the ocean were swelling like crazy and the ocean was slowly going from crystal blue and clear to brown and murky and muddy from all the dirt and mud that was being washed down from the rains. It was quite a site to behold as the entire ocean changed colors in the middle of pre-hurricane weather. Upon arriving home we all drank some hot water and no one wanted to bathe because of how cold it was. That night when I crawled into bed I check my watch's temperature gage, 70 degrees, definitely the coldest it's been in vanuatu yet. I woke up at about 3 in the morning and had to get my sheet out because I was cold and I checked my watch again, 66 degrees, I felt like that had to be some kind of record in this country haha. Needless to say when I come back to the states i'm probably going to struggle with how cold it will be in the winter.

The next morning I got up and called the peace corps safety and security officer to ask about the weather and she told me that sure enough there was a tropical low east of northern vanuatu, but it likely wouldnt turn into a hurricane. So for the next few days we stayed around the house a lot while the sky emptied itself on us and the wind blew all of the rain through the front of my kitchen. I felt bad because of how bad the weather was but I didnt know what else to tell my parents but, “hey atleasts its not hot right?” They didnt seem to agree quite as much. I can't blame them as i'm sure cold hurricane weather was hardly what they were expecting when they planned a trip to the south pacific! Haha. Anyways wednesday came around and we got a truck ride up to Big Water. I was really excited as it would be the first time I had ever rode a truck from my place all the way north. For the longest time the trucks couldn't pass because the roads were destroyed but luckily people had just recently fixed them. So it took us about 2 hours in the truck bouncing around in the back and ducking tree branches as we made our way up to big water. Once we got to Naone, the village right next to the water falls they were having a celebration for one of the church days so we stayed and watched for about a half an hour while some of the villages dressed up ridiculously and put on some funny skits. I don't think I quite got the point of the skits they were making, but they definitely were funny. After that we hiked up to the waterfall and my mom was brave enough to jump off from one of the lower areas. We hiked up, looked around then jumped in and swam out. I have to say I wish it was closer to me because I love jumping off the waterfalls there. We spent the next few days doing small things as the weather started to die down. We walked to the villages around mine and on saturday the weather had calmed enough that we jumped into the ocean and did a little snorkeling. The water was still a bit murky from all the rains but they day was warm enough that i'm pretty sure my mom was just happy to be outside and swimming around even if we weren't able to see a lot of fish.

Finally sunday rolled around and we headed to Ambae so that my parents could stay the night before catching their flight the next day to head to Vila. Of course, we got up in the morning and the clouds were just starting to clear and by the time we got to Ambae it was a nice sunny day. My parents managed to spend 12 days on Maewo with nothing but rain and not a single day of good sun. Oh well, I guess that is just how Maewo is.

Crazy Crossing (5/31/11)

 I was on Ambae for a gender and development workshop the past week. It was busy and a nice change of pace, but Sunday came around and I was ready to get back to the island and my pace of life. The day started off with a fantastic downpour that continued while me and the Ni-Van participants climbed into the truck to return to Lolowai before climbing in one of the small boats to travel back to Maewo. The truck ride back was wet and uneventful. Once we arrived in Lolowai we quickly threw all of our stuff onto the boat hoping to keep it from getting as wet as we already were from the rain. After a short wait of about an hour for the driver of the boat to come back from the store, that is about a minute walk away from the shore, we all climbed in ready to go home. The boat started up and I looked over the luggage one last time making sure we had everything. Naturally we'd forgotten something, but the something we'd forgotten was a foam mattress about as big as me. How this girl forgot her mattress I do not know, but that mean that we had to add a little extra time to the trip to go pick up her bed. So setting out at 9:30am, I was anticipating getting to Maewo at about 11am because of the extra little trip to get the mattress. We pulled up to the beach by the school and me and one of the other boys hopped out and ran to grab the mattress and brought it back soaking wet thanks to the rain. By the time we got back to the boat the rain had gotten more intense. It was coming down so thick you couldn't see Maewo or Pentecost at all in the distance like usual. It was nothing but grey spreading out before us. The driver cranked up the engine and we started heading towards Maewo. By this point my skin was starting to get wrinkled like I'd been sitting in a bath too long because of how wet we were from the rain. Undaunted by the downpour we bravely drove straight into the rain cloud on our way to Maewo. About halfway across we managed to catch a fairly large Wahoo (king fish is what they called it in bislama I think). Once we'd dragged the fish into the boat and toss the hook back out, we could no longer see any of the islands. We kept driving on looking for Maewo through the haze of the rain. After about an hour of driving we were approaching 11am and close to the time i'd expected to be home and we still hadn't seen any sign of Maewo. We were running a bit slower than normal because the water was pretty rough and we couldn't run as fast through the large swells so I just reasoned to myself that it would probably take longer than normal due to the rough water. After another hour went by I started getting nervous. We'd now been in the little wooden speedboat for two and a half hours without seeing any sign of Maewo, and for the past two hours we hadn't been able to see Ambae as well. One of the Ni-Vans joked around that Maewo didnt want us to come back so it moved. This apparently upset one of the girls who's first time it was away from Maewo, and she said we weren't going to make it back because we were lost. I asked if anyone had a compass hoping the boat driver might have kept one with him, but of course none of us had a compass. Another half an hour went by with all of us brooding in silence as we approached our 3^rd hour of driving around in the crossing that should have taken us all of 45 minutes. Finally, the barest outline of land broke through the rain. “That's Maewo!” called out our driver. I was still dubious about his proclamation as we'd been driving in circles so thoroughly I was unsure if the driver even could tell up from down let alone east from west. Sure enough, as it became more clear, it turned out to be Lolowai. We'd driven around for 3 and a half hours only to come out turned around and right back where we first entered the cloud. As luck would have it, the same time we saw the island, our gasoline ran out. The driver had a small reserve tank, so I held an umbrella and funnel while the driver and one of the other men poured gasoline into the tank as the boat swayed in the ocean swells. About a quarter of the gasoline missed the funnel and went all over my hand and the deck of the boat as the boat rocked too hard repeatedly. Fueled back up and with an island in sight we were all starting to feel a little better when the driver told us we had to go back to Lolowai to get more gasoline if we wanted to cross to Maewo. So after refueling and getting back into the boat it was now 2pm and we were just leaving Lolowai, again. As we came out to the middle the rain cloud still sad over Maewo. The driver killed the engine not wanting to try to run it again until it cleared. So we all gloomily stared at the rain as we floated for another hour waiting for it to clear. Finally becoming worried about it getting dark before the rain cleared we angled far south almost aiming for Pentecost which you could barely see south of Maewo now. Luckily it worked, allowing us to find the southern end of Maewo through the rain, by watching Pentecost. Finally, they unloaded me and all of my bags at the beach by my village. Looking at my watch it was now almost half past five, in the distance I could see slight color of sunset on some of the clouds past the storm that was finally clearing up. Worn out, I grabbed my bags and hiked back up the hill to my house in the light rain.

Building Toilets (5/20/11)

 So with my parent's visit on its way I’ve been trying to push my dad to help me get building a bathroom to house the flush toilet that he purchased years ago, in the hopes that before my parents get here we will have the toilet built so that they don't have to use my long drop toilet. Getting anything done in this culture is a process and getting anything done quickly tends to be impossible. That being said I decided the best way to start the toilet being built isn't to ask for lots of help from the community. The best way is to just start doing enough work on your own that when other people see you they feel bad for not helping and then pitch in. I gave my dad the money to purchase the cement and told him that the next day we'd go and collect sand that would be used to mix with the cement to make bricks for the septic tank. Now, most of Maewo's beaches are black stone so finding sanding sections can be difficult. Luckily (I had thought) there was a section of sand fairly close to the school that had been created during the last hurricane. Apparently though getting sand from a location so close was out of the question. So my dad told me the best place to get sand was about a half hour walk south of my village. Unsure how we were going to get the sand back to my house he said, “easy we'll just row the community's boat down, fill it up and then row it back.” Great with a boat we could load up tons and make the trip no problem. So we set out bright and early in the morning and got down to where the sand was we were planning to dig up. While on our way the boat took on a little water, which worried me but my dad said it wasn't a big deal and he'd cut a good plug to fill the drainage hole of the boat. So while he cut the plug my sisters and filled up 20 bags of sand. Each bag weighed about 80lbs so they were a little too heavy for my sisters to lift by themselves so I got the privilege of carrying all of the bags into the water to drop into the boat. Finally, all of this done, my dad and I hopped in the boat and began paddling back towards our village. Apparently the drainage of the boat wasn't the place where water was coming into the boat, there was a small crack near the back, and now with an extra 1600lbs in the boat it was taking on water really quickly. Seeing this my dad let me know that we had to paddle fast to make it back before the boat sank. So we paddled and got back to my village with the boat about half full of water. The water was rough and we couldn't bring the boat onto the beach cause the break was too rough, so while my sisters help the boat in place just outside of the break, I lifted the now wet bags of sand out of the boat onto my dad's back for him to carry one at a time back to shore. After getting wet the bags were heavy to the point that I could barely lift them over the side of the boat for my dad to take. They had to weigh close to 100 or more pounds now. Finally all of the bags unloaded and the boat about 3/4ths full of water now we attempted to carry the boat up onto shore, but it was too heavy with all the water it had taken on. So my little brother hopped in and started bailing until the boat was light enough that we could finally drag the boat up onto the beach. All of this work finally being done, I was worn out and not looking forward to dragging the bags of sand up the hill to my house. I picked up one of the bags to start the hike and my dad told me to stop. He said that since the bags were wet, we'd empty them onto a big canvas so they could dry and then we'd fill them up again and carry it up to the house. By this point I was positive all we succeeded in doing was moving some sand down the beach, not even any closer to getting it up to my house than before we started if he'd been willing to use the sand by the school. Two days later, my dad says he still needs to rest because he's so sore from carrying the bags of sand off the boat. Haha, if you read this mom and dad, I’m sorry but I don't think the toilet will be done before you get here!

Her Boyfriend Lives in a hut. (5/7/11)

 The other night I got a late night phone call from Stephanie which was a little surprising, because of the time difference. The first thing she said after hello was, “I have a good story to tell you!” The story she told me turned out to be a fantastic one of her going out with her friends. It involved girls too drunk to walk. Drunk girls going barefoot and carrying their friends around. A handful of other drunker arguments, with the gem of them all being the comment one of her friends made. Apparently, on of the very drunk girls was complaining about the boy she had been on a date with not being at her house after they'd gone out to the bars and Stephanie's friend shut the girl up by saying this, “You can't complain! Stephanie's boyfriend lives a thousand miles away in a hut! And he doesn't have internet access! And she isn't complaining!” I found this amusing for a number of reasons. One of the main ones being that mentioning I lived in a hut was very important to describing the situation of our relationship, as well as the fact that there was no internet access in my hut obviously made the circumstances that much more dire. I have to cede to her the point of me living 1000 miles away, while it is a bit of an underestimate it certainly does help you grasp the long distance part of the relation. Haha. Needless to say it was one of the best phone call's I’d received in a while, as well as helping remind me how lucky I am to have her! I can't say I know any other girls that would bother dating a guy who lives a thousand miles away in a hut without internet access... =)